SharePoint 2010 – Deploy It Now or Later?

When should I deploy SharePoint 2010? This is up for discussion by customers and IT service provider… The beta version was released in November 2009 and the final version will be released in the first half of 2010. Now it’s time to learn SharePoint 2010 but should you also deploy it or plan to deploy it in production environments?

Pro

New functionality… there are a lot of enhancements for users, authors, administrators and developers like enhanced collaboration features, service applications, sandboxed solutions or the client object model.

Tons of new resources… since basic concepts of SharePoint 2010 are greatly based on the 2007 version you cannot only use the yet large amount of SharePoint 2010 resources, you can also use the 2007 resources. Concepts like lists, pages and sites are the same and the object model has a lot of similarities with the 2007 version.

The community… there are many people playing around with the new version sharing their knowledge in blogs and social networks. Compared to the beginning of the year 2007 the community has incredibly grown and you will find a lot of people sharing tips, manuals or solutions for problems.

Contra

SharePoint 2010 is beta… Microsoft doesn’t support upgrading to the final version. So either you need to develop with the beta and check your implementation with the final version before going live or you need to migrate content if your customer already uses SharePoint 2010 beta in production. In both cases you will need additional time.

There is a risk… if you don’t have the knowledge and experience to operate SharePoint 2010 your customers will notice. If you have indeed the knowledge and experience to operate SharePoint 2007 the discussion will start even if SharePoint 2010 has new and enhanced functionality compared to the 2007 version. You might lose reputation or money.

Enough support… there is a big community but what about real world deployments and the resulting experience? After releasing the final version IT service provider as well as Microsoft still needs to gain that experience and maybe it’s not available at the beginning.

Summary

Of course at the end it depends on your situation… but if you have the people, the knowledge and if you know about possible show stoppers you should deploy SharePoint 2010.